RNG is perfect for SWTOR and I'll explain why.

[Clarian]

Who said I'm not interested in story chapters? I loved playing through the original class stories, but neither KotFE nor KotET have come close to capturing the enjoyment I got from vanilla SWTOR, strictly from a story, leveling perspective.

Same for me.

[Alloou]

Did you really read this article?

 

It states that it was the story and voice acting that made the costs astronomical because of the various choices and consequences that could be made. You have to realize since every dialogue scenario can play out in at least three different ways, the costs of that kind of development adds up quickly. Apply that to eight individual class stories as well as planetary missions and other voiced content and it quickly spins out of control.

 

BioWare wanted to have two operations in the game at release. I remember this quite vividly as I was in closed beta and BIoWare was scrambling to get Eternity Vault tested. They were only able to get one in with the first boss of the other. Never does Ohlen explicitly state that "SWTOR failed because we didn't focus enough on raids." All he did indicate was that they didn't finish the raids they had in development and this was largely because BioWare did not expect players to consume the main content, story, so quickly.

 

The rest of it goes on to say how F2P saved the game because it brought a new influx of players into the game, which is entirely true. F2P saved this game and nothing else. I think what is important to note from this article is the fact many seem to forget this is a F2P game that is largely marketed at appealing to new gamers. It is new players, and not veterans, that saved this game from being shut down.

 

Galactic Command is just the next step of incentivizing new players that are F2P to subscribe and witness the perks and wealth of five years of content SWTOR has to offer. As the OP of this thread indicates, Galactic Command and what it offers is really for newcomers. There is some content for veterans, but this system was really not for us.

 

Let's just stop here because we have a different interpretation of what Ohlen said.

[IanArgent]

As much as you are right, there is a small issue to tackle.

Gear is there to serve the purpose of harder content e.g. Green gear -> SM -> Blue -> HC -> Purple -> NiM.

 

In the absence of gear, how do you bolster your character's stats to be ready for NiM OPs?

If the baseline character is weak, people wont pass SM. If character is too strong then everything until NiM will likely be faceroll.

 

That's the rub, of course. But they don't have to make "more difficult" content by requiring "bigger numbers." To a certain extent, the differences between the various difficulty modes are already stricter mechanics and tighter timing. Being able to require "bigger numbers" is a design crutch.

 

Even within the current paradigm, allowing the armor/barrel/hilt to be put into any arbitrary equipment slot (the way every other item mod works) would sweep away the last vestiges of an archaic gearing idea that should have been done when moddable items first became a Thing. Also eliminate the difference between hilt and barrel, and move set bonus to the character advancement rather than the gear. I suppose that's all crazy talk, though.

[Jadescythe]

As much as you are right, there is a small issue to tackle.

Gear is there to serve the purpose of harder content e.g. Green gear -> SM -> Blue -> HC -> Purple -> NiM.

 

In the absence of gear, how do you bolster your character's stats to be ready for NiM OPs?

If the baseline character is weak, people wont pass SM. If character is too strong then everything until NiM will likely be faceroll.

 

Well, he only named PvP which doesn't have that issue.

 

But ultimately, you make it skill based. You make NiM so hard, that it will take months to figure out a fight and then execute your strategy accurately enough to kill a boss. Instead, they simply take the HM variant, add a mechanic or two and buff the crap out of their damage and HP. If you focus on the mechanics of the fight as a barrier to entry rather than treating each boss like a stat stick that you can just make bigger to swat players with, then you don't have to change the gear to allow a player to beat something.

 

That's why you typically see a group finish the hardest version of a raid first, they were the ones able to execute better without having accumulated all of the intended gear yet. More groups clear the content as time goes on and they have better and better gear. Some groups need top-end BiS gear and time invested because they have less skill and some groups can't clear the hardest content even in BiS gear because they simply lack the mechanical skill or decision making to get through.

[Jadescythe]

Did you really read this article?

 

It states that it was the story and voice acting that made the costs astronomical because of the various choices and consequences that could be made. You have to realize since every dialogue scenario can play out in at least three different ways, the costs of that kind of development adds up quickly. Apply that to eight individual class stories as well as planetary missions and other voiced content and it quickly spins out of control.

 

BioWare wanted to have two operations in the game at release. I remember this quite vividly as I was in closed beta and BIoWare was scrambling to get Eternity Vault tested. They were only able to get one in with the first boss of the other. Never does Ohlen explicitly state that "SWTOR failed because we didn't focus enough on raids." All he did indicate was that they didn't finish the raids they had in development and this was largely because BioWare did not expect players to consume the main content, story, so quickly.

 

The rest of it goes on to say how F2P saved the game because it brought a new influx of players into the game, which is entirely true. F2P saved this game and nothing else. I think what is important to note from this article is the fact many seem to forget this is a F2P game that is largely marketed at appealing to new gamers. It is new players, and not veterans, that saved this game from being shut down.

 

Galactic Command is just the next step of incentivizing new players that are F2P to subscribe and witness the perks and wealth of five years of content SWTOR has to offer. As the OP of this thread indicates, Galactic Command and what it offers is really for newcomers. There is some content for veterans, but this system was really not for us.

 

He never mentioned a lack of raids as the only reason, you are correct. But his main point was the lack of end game. That could be strongholds, dailies, PvP, raids, reputation, etc. All of the end game features SWTOR has now that it didn't have at launch. Different players have different desires at end game, but launch SWTOR offered very little to everyone.

 

What was very clear from the article:

 

-Lack of end game was a primary factor for players leaving

-Voiced dialogue and cutscenes were not a major portion of the budget

-Creating the broken engine we have today cost the game not only players, but a substantial amount of money in develoment as well

- Adding choices with consequences is a bad idea, so maybe don't make that the selling point for your 4.0 and 5.0 expansions???

[IanArgent]

Here ...

https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/29/gdc-2013-james-ohlen-on-how-f2p-saved-swtor/

 

Much of the cost was funneled toward creating an engine that supported a team of over 300 people working on it at the same time and adding choice and consequence to the MMO story. "Don't be scared about adding voice over and cool cinematic content," he advised his audience, "but do be careful about adding lots of choice with consequence because that adds to QA cost and development cost and makes it hard to design everything."

 

Ohlen also argued that the development time accorded The Old Republic was not overly long when compared to the average development time of triple-A MMOs. He explained that games like Guild Wars 2, TERA, and The Elder Scrolls Online bear a half-a-decade development cycle. SWTOR was no different.

 

Still applicable - this looks a lot like what I saying during the 4.x cycle last year.

 

Based on BioWare's pre-launch metrics, the team expected players to get through the content in three or four months. This assessment might seem obviously wrong to an experienced MMO player, but we are talking about a game with extensive voiceover and literally thousands of cinematic cutscenes adding up to about 170 to 180 hours of content. So the devs anticipated that TOR would take more consecutive days to complete than the average MMO. But according to BioWare's metrics, players were tearing through the content an average of 40 hours a week; some players spent more than 120 hours a week in the game. "Within four and five weeks, we suddenly had close to a half a million people at the endgame," Ohlen said. "It was something we didn't expect at all." Players were unsatisfied and began to exit the game.

 

And the speed-running never stopped. So they have apparently decided to put a stop to it via slowing down gearing. (Not how I would have done it, myself).

 

When free-to-play launched in November, it "blew all expectations out of the water," said Ohlen. Subscriptions started going up again. Concurrent players on the servers went way up. Both of those statistics continue to rise. As Ohlen put it, TOR is the second biggest subscription MMORPG in the western world, it has had two million new accounts since the F2P launch, thousands of new players try out the game everyday, and TOR is one of the largest microtransaction money-makers for publisher EA.

 

Which makes them backing away from the F2P segment by making the endgame sub only a headscratcher. Maybe the F2P money is drying up?

[Alloou]

Which makes them backing away from the F2P segment by making the endgame sub only a headscratcher. Maybe the F2P money is drying up?

 

To be honest i can't really understand what are BW's intentions/long term plan for the game. It's not like they are sharing with us.

F2P saved the game, that much is guaranteed.

They launched SoR but they lost players.

Then at 4.0 they went with monthly chapters. Last quarterly report showed loss of revenue from subscriptions primarily due to SWTOR. Which is kinda expected since it was the end of the expansion.

Now in 5.0 they went away from monthly chapters, added long GC grinds and cut out pretty much everyone non-sub.

6.0 - ??

[Anzel]

#RemoveRNG

[Transcendent]

Thus, anything and everything BioWare has done since, such as Galactic Command, must be a terrible idea and scrapped as a result.

 

That's almost as bipolar as BioWare decision making Aowin.

 

The idea behind GC and RNG gear crates is a sound idea. I think that because it gives access to not only gear, but vanity items to players who may not have been able to earn those in other methods or types of gameplay. The part where I think it falls flat on it's face? That it is the only method of gearing.

 

If BioWare had turned around and provided the same methods of gearing through PvP Commendations / Operations Tokens (perhaps even expanding that system to HM flashpoints as well) and left some form of other reward system in place to purchase companion gifts for a reasonable price (not some horrific and just outright bad implementation they decided on for the Odessen vendor of 250k per gift).

 

Then came along in 5.0 and added a GC RNG gearing layer on top of all of that? Who wouldn't find that an improvement? Another way to earn gear? One that means even the most dedicated GSF player who never sets foot in PvE or PvP content has a means to earn things that they couldn't before, and may even entice them to try out other parts of the game?

 

I'm not saying it should be scrapped, if anything I'd like to see the current implementation added to the 4.0 implementation of gearing. Then it's a worthy system, and RNG wouldn't be overly problematic or detrimental to any part of the community. Those who couldn't earn top tier gear even get a chance to do so, regardless of whether they require it or not, but it opens up parts of the game to them they may previously have been excluded from.

 

As it stands though? It really is a poor implemenation. If you can't see that, then that's fine. There are a fair few of us who can see it for what it is.

[IanArgent]

If they added tokens back in, they wouldn't come at the rate at which they came in 4.0 - where you could be geared in hours or days. If your idea of "backstop the RNG gearing" includes "so I can get gear that quickly," I can't see that happening. The gear treadmill slowdown is too obvious and deliberate for that.

[LordArtemis]

I personally feel Bioware has never really understood their F2P/Premium playerbase, nor have they encouraged cartel sales like they should have.

 

Instead, they had one of the most punitive F2P systems on the market, and I think their metrics reflected this, as they found most income came from subs (paraphrasing here).

 

When you have 100 players, 70 reject the game, 10 are FTP and 20 are subs and pay, it looks like subs pay the most...but that ignores the 70 players that were lost to other games...and their revenue. All conjecture naturally.

 

I think they were lucky that their system saved the game....and I feel that they have made direct decisions that has reduced the ability of this title to make a profit...or at least a much larger profit.

 

I think that trend will continue, as it seems Bioware ignores most of the market metrics when it comes to F2P. And they will continue to suffer the consequences, known or not.

[Transcendent]

The gear treadmill slowdown is too obvious and deliberate for that.

 

Which begs the question, what are they not telling us?

[Jadescythe]

If they added tokens back in, they wouldn't come at the rate at which they came in 4.0 - where you could be geared in hours or days. If your idea of "backstop the RNG gearing" includes "so I can get gear that quickly," I can't see that happening. The gear treadmill slowdown is too obvious and deliberate for that.

 

I agree. At best maybe you could get a single set piece for the raid group at the end of each Operation at a level based on the difficulty of the Operation. It would most likely still require you to be at a command level high enough to get the piece in your pack in the first place to use it. The grind was intentionally included, I don't see them going back on it easily, especially after seeing the nerf on gold mob CXP already.

[Alloou]

I agree. At best maybe you could get a single set piece for the raid group at the end of each Operation at a level based on the difficulty of the Operation. It would most likely still require you to be at a command level high enough to get the piece in your pack in the first place to use it. The grind was intentionally included, I don't see them going back on it easily, especially after seeing the nerf on gold mob CXP already.

 

How about this:

Every 5 GC levels you get a token to trade for a piece of gear (like the ones that dropped from OP bosses) on top of what you get from Crates. At lvl 70 you will get 14 tokens to have a full set. From 70-90 you can send the items to your alt or keep them for your offspec.

At lvl 90 you switch to T2,start the token system again at every 5 lvls and the previous gear can be sent to mirrors via legacy armor. This way by the time you reach 300, you have full max gear, 1,5 half sets of T2 gear ( mirror and offspec) and 1,5 set T1 gear.

After 300, you can RE for schematics, send the tokens to alts etc.

IF this is too much you can even make it to exactly 6 tokens every 15 lvls to guarantee someone a 6-set bonus by the time they reach the next Tier gear.

[BrotherJohn]

Grind-disintergrate-repeat. Thanks for including me in the "fun!"

 

this sums up this POS of a system they put in game.

[soulseekerr]

I support this new system if they put the OPS gear vendors back on the fleets and let the OPS bosses drop the same unassembled items and random pieces they always have. Then everyone is happy.

 

Couldn't agree more!

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Couldn't agree more!

 

Except PVP players who would ideally now get annihilated by people gearing in Operations - so not everyone would be happy. Although I do support the return of gear drops to ops.

 

Remove gear from being a thing in PVP entirely would solve a lot of issues.

[Aowin]

Except PVP players who would ideally now get annihilated by people gearing in Operations - so not everyone would be happy. Although I do support the return of gear drops to ops.

 

Remove gear from being a thing in PVP entirely would solve a lot of issues.

 

It's a catch-22. You can't have raiders having superior gear, or they'll stomp the PvP community which was the case at launch when expertise wasn't working as intended. Thus, PvPers need gear that is on an equal footing in order to make this system practical. Bolster is still involved, but taking gear out of PvP, entirely, would be the wrong move.

 

The reason I say this is because class balancing would negatively impact PvP and PvE. It would be statistically impossible to balance anything when gear wouldn't matter in one but would have a huge impact in the other. As it stands it's better to have a universal gear system that's applicable to both play styles. Obviously, it's determining how to make that gear available that's the tricky part.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Aowin

[eartharioch]

Except PVP players who would ideally now get annihilated by people gearing in Operations - so not everyone would be happy. Although I do support the return of gear drops to ops.

 

Remove gear from being a thing in PVP entirely would solve a lot of issues.

 

Just make PVP Bolster bump everybody up to Tier 3 equivalent pieces. That way OPs gear doesn't give raiders an advantage and PVpers still need to work for ops gear if they want to run ops.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

It's a catch-22. You can't have raiders having superior gear, or they'll stomp the PvP community which was the case at launch when expertise wasn't working as intended. Thus, PvPers need gear that is on an equal footing in order to make this system practical. Bolster is still involved, but taking gear out of PvP, entirely, would be the wrong move.

 

The reason I say this is because class balancing would negatively impact PvP and PvE. It would be statistically impossible to balance anything when gear wouldn't matter in one but would have a huge impact in the other. As it stands it's better to have a universal gear system that's applicable to both play styles. Obviously, it's determining how to make that gear available that's the tricky part.

 

Not entirely true for PVE anymore because it's not competitive. Sure some people get up in arms because there FOTM class isn't putting up the stats it was previously but if it's still viable to do the PVE content ( which all classes are imo - some harder than others sure but all are viable ) then that's good enough. PVP balance is far more important because it's actually competitive against other players and would be much simpler to balance if stat gear wasn't an issue in determining balancing ( yay no more bolster for example ).

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Just make PVP Bolster bump everybody up to Tier 3 equivalent pieces. That way OPs gear doesn't give raiders an advantage and PVpers still need to work for ops gear if they want to run ops.

 

I wouldn't have an issue with that if BWA proved they could actually get bolster right. They keep seeming to want to have "mostly" bolster where you can still get weird effects from certain gearing choices be they positive or detrimental. Might be easier without expertise now of course and yes a simple bolster that just set everyone ( and I mean everyone ) to stats based on BWAs "balancing" would be great ( in that it doesn't care what gear they have on when they entered the match ).

 

Problem? BWA seem to watch to sell GC by giving stat boosts from the gear. Harder to sell the grind if no one is getting any boost at all from GC. GC has all but doomed the idea of nice level non-gear based PVP in this game imo.

[Pietrastor]

Is there a thread yet when people compare their drop rates so we could deduce based on larger sample what is it?

[eartharioch]

I wouldn't have an issue with that if BWA proved they could actually get bolster right.

Well, that in and of itself would solve lots of problems

 

They keep seeming to want to have "mostly" bolster where you can still get weird effects from certain gearing choices be they positive or detrimental. Might be easier without expertise now of course and yes a simple bolster that just set everyone ( and I mean everyone ) to stats based on BWAs "balancing" would be great ( in that it doesn't care what gear they have on when they entered the match ).

I get what you're saying. I main a concealment operative, and spent a *lot* of time optimizing my PVP gear for 3.x -- which, if you followed Randall's thead(s) involved maximizing bolster for the 2-piece 1.x PVE set bonus. And then I had to deal with PVP "gurus" complaining that I wasn't geared properly (b/c expertise a little under max)...pro-tip: if you have to type in a PhD dissertation into chat to prove you have optimal gear, there *might* be something wrong with the gearing system.

 

Problem? BWA seem to watch to sell GC by giving stat boosts from the gear. Harder to sell the grind if no one is getting any boost at all from GC. GC has all but doomed the idea of nice level non-gear based PVP in this game imo.

FYI, you = preaching to choir

 

My sub runs out around xmas time, so if I stop chatting with you in a few weeks, it's not personal

Edited December 7, 2016 by eartharioch

[scardera]

should be great to live in the carebears world of the swtor white knights

[Jamtas]

Is there a thread yet when people compare their drop rates so we could deduce based on larger sample what is it?

 

0/22 on set gear myself so far.